All due to fear of truth, love, and acceptance ingrained in him by classmates since his youth.
“More poetry by moonlight?” he read again and again.
Children can be so cruel.
Chapter 3
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Homeward and Duty Bound
The two awoke the next morning to the sunrise barely visible to the east. Cloud cover had moved in overnight and it seemed that rain may fall for at least the early part of the day. The foothills below were beginning to go from mist to low-lying cloud and it looked to them as if Heaven had swallowed the world below.
The prior evening’s reminiscence was short-lived. Each man agreed that a good night’s sleep should win out over an unofficial tradition. This marked a key moment in their lives: the first of many times reason of manhood outweighed the fancifulness of youth.
They packed up their belongings and trekked back down the mountainside. With their bearings confirmed they set off on the road that would take them home.
Even this early in the morning they were passed by many people and transports on this well-used road to the southern ocean. Some horse-drawn, others large and mechanically powered, generally by some rudimentary fuel engine that refused to die. The more advanced and cleaner methods of travel such as lithium, ionic, and cold nuclear were still very evil, or at the very least, unspoken of and taboo. The fuel engines were far more efficient than some in mankind’s past, but compared to the now-shunned alternatives, they were starkly primitive.
Aryu had still not revealed his mountainside find to Johan. Something in his heart had told him not to yet. It wasn't selfishness as much as it was a sense that something like this needed to be finessed into a moment, not forced. During the walking done that day, he'd come to think that should such a moment never arise, Johan might never even know he had it. A quiet secret he may just have to carry with him to wherever his post-Tan Torna Qu-ay life took him.
Aryu couldn't say what made him feel this way. Being a guarded person was nothing new to him, despite his often talkative outward nature. All he knew was it was the truth. There was a meaning to finding it, but he'd need time to decide what that meaning was.
Johan was keeping a brisk pace ahead of him, making sure to check back every now and again to see that Aryu was still there. Johan had known he was lost in thought ever since yesterday afternoon on the mountain. He had noticed the crumpled note in his hands last night. He loved his friend like a brother and thought him a fool for passing up that chance with the pretty mountain girl, but they rarely spoke of it.
Johan gravitated to Aryu at an early age, attracted to the prospect of having a friend even more shunned than he was. He didn't care about the wings or the stigma that came with them. All he saw was a nice kid with a big heart, sad eyes, and common interests. If he could carry Johan to some far-off place for a day’s adventure a little quicker than others, all the better. The topic of his wings was barely mentioned. By the time the two of them became close, Aryu had perfected the art of hiding them in backpacks and loose clothing, before they’d grown too large.
The two grew up studying things they both were attracted to. Johan had an interest in the more primal of man’s tendencies. Weapons and wars, battle tactics and historic military actions. The attraction of the classic tales of one versus many. And to a point, the past technologies (and mistakes that came with them) of the world they lived in.
Aryu joined Johan often in his research (the histories of which were very well-documented in books and pictures, dating back many thousands of years). Each child of the village was generally challenged to discover their passions early in life, so they may grow into a field as opposed to having one forced on them. If there were an inordinate number of children who wanted to become bakers or weapon makers, it was common for a town or village to keep one or two of the more gifted ones and “trade” other places for people whose passions would lead them down the path of a profession Tan Torna Qu-ay was lacking. It was a beautiful symmetry that kept the people moving and the villages and towns well-connected in a place where long-distance communication was nearly impossible.
It wasn't a surprise to Aryu that Johan had a passion that would surely lead him to the west, where the military of the areas was active and often clamoring for new blood. Just like Aryu, Johan wasn't so ready to forgive those who had done him wrong. Soon his name would be clear, but a lifetime of abuse does not disappear overnight, and rightly so.
Clear to Aryu for some time was that Johan wasn't just passionate about these things; he was extremely talented in them as well, the moat incident standing most clearly in his mind. A moat. Unbelievable. A word-of-mouth hold-over from another age of man. Yet he thought of it as a viable option after only a moment. That was Johan. Strategist, warrior, and man hell-bent on fighting his own war.
It was while pondering these incidences and lamenting the fact that very soon their two paths would likely cause them to separate that they were passed by the first cart of casualties.
They thought little of the approaching caravan. They'd been passed by more than one already. Large caravans powered either by an animal team or engines were the main source of transportation of goods in this part of the world.
They first spotted it on their horizon. Taxing beast and engine
